Greenpoint, Part 1

When Francis Morrone led his first tours of Greenpoint (which were surely among the first tours anyone ever led of Greenpoint), it was hard to imagine that the neighborhood would one day become one of Brooklyn’s trendiest places to live. That’s just what happened, as more and more people found out about the superb row house stock and extremely pleasing scale of the neighborhood. Adjacency to Williamsburg’s ultra-fashionable Northside did not hurt. And then came the rezoning of the waterfront. Our walk will trace Greenpoint’s changes up to today, but with a definite focus on the neighborhood’s industrial past, as we walk mainly through the Greenpoint Historic District and along an East River waterfront that was once among the busiest industrial complexes in the nation. This is the tour that was originally scheduled for New Year’s Eve and cancelled because of the frigid weather.